Baroness Randerson: My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for ensuring that we have this important and very interesting debate. The reports of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee have been very wide-ranging in the points that they have raised relating to the series of legislation that has come through on drivers’ hours.
The first relaxation of hours was in December 2020 until 31 March 2021 and went from 90 hours per fortnight to 99, and from nine to 11 hours per day for a maximum of two days a week. I say to noble Lords: 11 hours a day of driving? The Minister is looking at me as if I have got the information wrong. I hope she will put me right later on.
On 12 July the relaxation was then extended until 4 October, but the committee— I refer to its 12th report, not its 18th, which I will come to in a minute—  noted that similar regulations were debated in March. It noted that the DVSA samples showed
“fairly high levels of non-compliance with the drivers’ hours regime”,
and that the Department for Transport did not have records of which of those cases, where there was non-compliance, had actually applied to use the extended hours officially and which cases were just ignoring the limitations. In practice, the Government have sanctioned longer hours. One action is bound, I believe, to knock on to the other. By sanctioning longer hours, it is almost a nod and a wink to those rogue operators the noble Earl mentioned—although I do not suggest that was the Government’s intention. It is not just a question of longer daily driving hours; it is a complex weekly pattern of rest periods for at least 24 hours.
The areas of concern are as follows. First, complexity itself is a problem in the observance of these regulations and, secondly, the Government give them as the reason for this relaxation so that they can maintain critical supply chains. But this relaxation applies to the industry as a whole. In so far as the department has undertaken consultation, the answers on whether the relaxation was welcomed were very divided: 47% were supportive and 43% were opposed. It is worth pointing out that the major haulage organisations have, over a period of time, expressed grave concerns at this method of managing, or attempting to alleviate, the crisis of a lack of drivers. They point out that this is a significant worsening of the employment conditions for drivers at a time when the Government have lighted upon poor employment condition as a reason why we have a driver shortage in the first place.
I notice from the Explanatory Memorandum on the current set of regulations that the word “Brexit” is not allowed to be used, but Brexit has complicated an already serious situation. The problem is that the Government cannot alleviate the situation by encouraging in new drivers from Europe, because the extending of drivers’ hours is seen as a worsening of conditions.
Getting to the nub of this, there is of course an inevitable impact on road safety. “Don’t drive tired” is a slogan for a reason. The secondary legislation committee points out that evidence from previous periods of relaxation has not been referenced or utilised. Normal drivers’ hours are based on accident statistics so they should not be ignored. Seriously, there are a lot of crashes involving lorries, so there is no lack of evidence.
Finally, the 18th report extends this measure again until 10 January. Temporary is becoming permanent, and it is not acceptable. People are learning to accept this; 27% of drivers stopped in roadside tests are now in breach of the normal hours, and there is no evidence that those people have applied for any kind of alleviation of their hours. The Explanatory Memorandum says:
“The Department has not been made aware of any increase in accidents”.
This is the Department for Transport, for goodness’ sake; it is in charge of collecting the statistics, it is not for them to be “made aware” by some outside body.
We need a more constructive approach to improving standards and quality of employment for HGV drivers, and I recommend that the Minister looks at the relais routiers in France. That might not be a popular idea  with the current Government, but it is a well-established system that provides good facilities, and I would welcome reassurance from the Minister that, now that the number of HGV drivers is beginning to pick up somewhat, we will not see this measure come back again.

Lord Moylan: My Lords, Amendments 23 and 35 give the House the opportunity to discuss the robustness of the science on which the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill is allegedly resting. I detect a lack of enthusiasm for the wide-ranging debate on this topic that might have otherwise ensued at a more timely part of the day, so I shall keep my remarks as brief  as can.
I was once on the Zambezi and the opportunity to observe the crocodiles. These are largely placid animals that sit basking in the sun but, when hungry, they can move with terrifying rapidity and can kill very rapidly indeed. The person I was with, who knew about crocodiles, said—and I will stand corrected by the noble Lord, Lord Trees, if I have got any of this wrong, of course—that the brain of a crocodile is a very small thing. The size of a pea was suggested to me, and that there was no capacity within the brain at all, neurologically, for a function that allowed for any memory. The consoling thought that was offered to me was that, since a crocodile cannot remember anything, if it did eat me, it was not personal.
We are about to enact a Bill—we are close to passing it through our House—without limitation that, as I understand it, declares a crocodile to be a sentient creature; that is, a creature that can experience pleasure and pain, and science is prayed in aid to support this. I take the crocodile simply as an example, there are other creatures with brains almost as small as a crocodile and probably even smaller that are being covered  and in scope of this Bill. The difficulty of this is, they have very limited functions, partly because the size of the brain simply limits the functions that they can actually have.
No one doubts, as a matter of science, that a crocodile, as I say taken as an example, will respond in a certain way if a sufficiently strong stimulus is applied to it. That is a neurological reaction explicable by the movement of chemicals and electrons through the nervous system and in what passes for the crocodile’s brain. What we are being asked to do here goes way beyond that. How can this be extended scientifically—not by analogy, not by empathy, but scientifically—to include the concept of pain in a crocodile as we understand pain.
Pain is more than a simple neurological reaction. Pain, as we understand it, exists in anticipation. One worries about it coming in one’s direction. It exists in reflection; one thinks about it in the past. One has coping strategies for dealing with it, and so on. Most importantly, it exists as a time of abnormality. Pain is abnormal; we want the pain to go away, so that we  can go back to normal. How can a creature with no memory have any conception of what normality is, let alone what abnormality is? How can it understand pain, beyond that neurological reaction, in any sense that we understand it? Yet there are scientists, or people who hold themselves forth as scientists, who say that scientifically that link can be made when it is actually almost incomprehensible for most of us. Who are the scientists in whom the Government are placing such faith for the scientific basis of animal sentience that they claim to exist? Where do they gather? Which respectable journals do that publish in? Who is this cadre of leading animal sentience scientists?
Of course, there are animal welfare scientists and veterinarians, and people like that, but this is very specialised, a very narrow and a relatively new field—only over the last 20 years. It has no leading lights at the moment; it is, I would suggest to your Lordships’ House, predominantly ideologically driven, and it is based in large measure on funding being supplied by what might be thought of as groups and foundations with a prior view.
So my question really to my noble friend, even as he trembles on the brink of his success—he is very close to getting his way and seeing this Bill through with practically no amendments—and before he commits the nation to this Bill and this version of animal sentience, is whether he should not think twice about the claims that he makes and the confidence that he rests in what is a very ropey branch of science. Should that not lead him to pull back and consider this amendment, which requires peer review of scientific reports from the committee? In fact, it requires peer review of all reports, and I realise now that that is a bit silly, because some of them will just be procedural—but we can work on the wording. On the scientific reports of the committee, could not he and I work together to get an appropriate amendment at Third Reading that would try to make sure that we rest at last on robust science and not on something ropey and partisan? If it is ropey and partisan, we will come deeply to regret it.